We are learning so much so fast about what we need to have in place when a pandemic happens, only it has happened and a lot of us weren’t prepared — or were prepared but for very different disasters writes LATimescitybeat.
This is not a test. This is not a drill. This is the real thing. If only it weren’t.
Some confusion ensued as people arrived to wait in line to enter the Trader Joe’s store in Monrovia as employees tell customers waiting in line that it would open doors to everyone at 9:00am, not only senior citizens. Senior citizens arrived believing doors would open earlier to older residents as some of the people were told by employees and it was reported. Some grocery outlets were offering special morning hours of shopping to accommodate older residents.
Some blocks and communities no doubt have done all the right things in advance: mapping out their neighbors’ homes, putting phone numbers and email addresses next to names. But all over the city now there are blocks and communities that haven’t done that prep work and, no matter how much they want to, don’t know how to check in on or offer aid to people they’ve seen around but for whom they have neither addresses nor names.
I had the good luck the other day to see one of the elderly people I’ve been worried about as she paced down my block for her exercise. But when I tried to ask her if she was OK and if I could get her anything, I faced two problems: She told me she spoke only Armenian, and I don’t know much more than the “Ari!” that another neighbor uses to make her dog come to her. Also, the woman, who I would guess is in her 80s, was terrified to come any closer to me than about 10 feet.
Because we didn’t all have disaster kits in place, because even if we did we didn’t have some of the specific things we now need, because no one is sure how long this will last and whether supplies will dry up, everyone is out hunting now for the same things at the same moment.But we’re still struggling to absorb how much all that moving around might have the power to harm others.
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